Please be aware that the subject matter of this blog may be difficult for many. If you are very sensitive, please don’t read it, for you own comfort and sanity.

My main point in posting this is the hope that it will help others to realize that they’re not alone. I also harbor the hope that perhaps someday, we can make this too difficult for them to continue, as well.

Awareness is the first step.

It really does happen. And if it happened to you, now you know you’re not the only one.

Names have been changed to protect both the innocent, and the guilty. I believe that many of the guilty are also victims, and I believe that there’s hope for all of us.

Please read with care.

All the best to you and your family, whoever and where-ever you are.

Please be aware that I own ALL of the copyright on ALL of the written material herein. Thank you.

Like every story, mine really starts before I was born– even before my mother was born. My grandmother, Edna, gave birth to a daughter. The father was Edna’s stepfather, who raped her. A few years later, she left to get married, leaving her firstborn daughter, Ava, behind. Ava was raised as Edna’s sister– not daughter. But in the way that families have, she eventually was told who she really was. Kids have never been the best at keeping secrets.

As I understand it, this was the beginning of the blood feud between my mother and her sister. Except that my mother didn’t know about her sister. Edna never told her about Ava. So the blood feud went only one direction.

Fast-forward a few years, and my mother Olivia was born. Then there was Theresa, and then Samantha.

The years passed, as they always do, and a deep hatred grew between my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother, Edna, would accuse my mother of trying to steal her husband away. Yes, that’s my grandfather, George– my mother’s father. Edna did crazy things, like hiding the girls’ shoes, and threatening them, and abusing them. Mostly mental abuse. Her favorite was to call my mother a whore and to scream profanities of that nature at her.

George and Edna were Seventh Day Adventists, and they were on the fringes of extremism. They did allow music on Saturday, but they didn’t allow dancing or jewelry.

The other girls managed to conform for the most part, but my mother was violently opposed to these rigid practices and rebelled. Edna was often violently infuriated by Olivia’s rebellion, and the fights were numerous.

Before I continue, I should point out that much of what I’ve just told you had to be reconstructed from various family members’ statements to me. So I would state that to some degree, the accuracy of it could be questioned to the same degree to which my family members’ comments and stories can be questioned.

Like me, they based their comments on their memories. Like all of us, especially those with difficult histories, it’s easy to blow us off. But my memories are surprisingly accurate, as you’ll come to see later on. Again, I wish I could prove it to you, but to do so would expose my family to things that I am absolutely unwilling to expose them to.

But I do have reason to believe these things, because all of them came from random comments that weren’t intended to expose anything that they did. They were comments made alone in many cases, which without the rest of the information wouldn’t mean much. I’m pretty good at putting things together, though.

Edna adamantly denies that Ava is her daughter, yet all of the rest of the family supports the statements. Therefore, I leave you to make your own best guess on it. What comes later seems to indicate that, at best, there was a major hatred from Ava towards my mother. I think there’s a larger reason why besides she just didn’t like her.

I was told by family that the reason was because Ava was left to be raised in poverty while Edna went off and raised Olivia in relative wealth and comfort. Being abandoned by your mother in a terrible situation might be enough to infuriate you, I would think.

Back to the story, though. My mother eventually left the household, and went off on her own. She chose deliberately to become a prostitute. She got married to a man named Jacob R-. They had a supposed open marriage, wherein she could continue her trade, and he could have any sexual relations he wanted. This was the late ’60s, it was all the rage, you see.

My youngest aunt, Annette, was born a few days before my brother was. Edna was 42 when she had her, so she was essentially an only child. This becomes relevant later, I promise.

So my mother had Jacob the 3rd, and life went on. Jacob the 2nd was happy with his boy, and they were carrying on with their lives. Except that Jacob Jr. was abusive. My mother, however, stayed, and seemed to sink deeper and deeper into drugs, alcohol, and prostitution.

When she found out she was pregnant with me, she only ramped it up more. She didn’t want to be pregnant, so she began to take heavy amounts of LSD and increased smoking pot. I was born slightly premature, in San Diego, CA. I had an open pallet, so that you could see my brain through my mouth. I also had no bone on the back of my skull.

Because of these birth defects, and the fact that my spine was bent, the doctors put me into another room by myself, and left me to die. My mother, however, thwarted their efforts when she demanded to hold my cold, dead body… oops. Only, I wasn’t dead. So with a nurse’s unauthorized assistance, my mother saved me.

It’s a strange thing, though. She tried to kill me while pregnant with me, but then saved my life once I was born. It was the first of many such odd instances in my life– where someone who wanted to kill me saved me.

There was another problem, too, though. Jacob Jr. decided that I wasn’t his. I was born, you see, with a full head of coal black hair. My mother’s a redhead, and Jacob Jr. is blonde. So he decided I couldn’t be his, so open marriage be damned, he didn’t want a thing to do with me.

Things just went from bad to worse, though. I was a difficult baby from the start. I was sick all the time, and finally my mother handed me over to Edna in a fit of post partum depression. She couldn’t cope, and I was dying, despite the early save. My bone had grown in by now, and bone had grown across my pallet. So much, in fact, that it dangled into my mouth. This is called a Torus, and mine was large enough to give me problems with drinking a bottle.

Not only that, but Edna finally figured out that I was allergic to the milk. I was put on soy, and I slowly began to get better. My mother got me back.

The earliest memories I have are of my mother and Jacob Jr. fighting. He would beat her, and Jacob III and I would hide in the coat closet. These memories are characterized by the other man who would come over. He was their “third partner,” and he would finally calm them down– usually shortly after my mother was passed out on the floor, bleeding. Then they would find us, and threaten us if we told anyone.

I did tell after I was grown, a few times. But it was hard; I was still scared of the “Other Man.”

They nearly always fought over me. I felt guilt about that. It was just the beginning of my feeling that I wasn’t supposed to exist– to live– to survive. I was meant to be dead from the beginning. Because I didn’t die, I was told in both direct and indirect ways, I ruined everyone else’s lives.

When I was three years old, my mother was arrested in Colorado for prostitution and possession. I was born in November of 1971, so I suppose it was sometime in ’75.

By this time, Edna wouldn’t take Jacob III and I anymore. They were fed up, and weren’t going to “support” my mother’s habits anymore by helping with us. Jacob Jr. said he wasn’t going to take us. He’d take Jacob III, because Jacob was HIS. But me? No way, he wasn’t going to take me. The Other Man supported Jacob 2’s decision, and suggested that they find other family for me.

But my mother wouldn’t allow us to be separated. So this was how Ava and Bill (her husband– foster son to Edna’s mother/stepfather) got involved. They came down from Idaho and picked us up. They promised my mother that after her year sentence was served, they would give us right back.

Now, my life up to that point hadn’t been great. But things took a real turn for the worse at this point. Bill and Ava Robertson got us because she was my mother’s aunt (and in reality, my grandmother’s daughter, remember).

The first thing that they did was to change our names. It was at this point that they began to clearly show the differences between my status and Jacob 3’s. Jacob got to choose his new name. He chose Rodney. Then I got to choose a name… I chose Elizabeth. I admired Elizabeth Taylor, and since I had no choice at all in having my name changed, I wanted to be just like her.

Jacob became Rodney, as he requested. I became Joanne, as I didn’t want and didn’t like. So now my name was Joanne Robertson.

Here, it becomes a bit more difficult to make the information clear, because this is based entirely off of my own memories. And my memories are quite extensive, but they are a child’s disjointed memories, which I must carefully disseminate for you with an adult’s mind. So please forgive me if they don’t come out in any particular order, as that’s sort of how they’re organized (or not organized) in my mind.

I suppose the easiest part to begin with is the regular, daily abuse that I experienced. I think these will be the easiest to relate to and understand. And relay.

One of the strongest memories, that sticks with me the most, is eating with the dogs. I ate dog food mostly. I was scum, after all, and I barely deserved even that. So I fought with the dogs for dog food. I ate on the floor, never at the table. And when I got food, it was bacon (my favorite, just like the other dogs!), white bread, beans sometimes, and on rare occasions, a hot dog. Food was often my reward when they decided to use reward versus punishment.

This brings me to my first very strong positive memory. We were talking about how there are good people out there, too. I definitely met one, and I bless him and his family with my whole heart.

I was a starving little kid. A scrawny, poorly dressed, starving blonde haired, blue-eyed waif. I saw that when I looked at pictures of myself. There weren’t many.

One day, us kids went to a store. I only remember that there were only a few of us– Raymond (now known as Ramon), Jacob, and me I think. Anyway, we went into the store, and I stole some bread. I looked up and realized I’d gotten caught– the owner was staring at me in shock. I dropped the bread and ran away to hide behind Jacob. The man never said anything.

We went back to that store every few days. For smokes, I think, but I’m not sure. But a strange thing happened when I was there. The man would go into the back room, and shut the door. Then he’d come out of the door, and leave it open. Sitting on a barrel back there, or a bunch of boxes (whatever was in my view), would be some food. A sandwich. A bowl of mac & cheese. Pork and beans.

He’d leave, and I’d sneak back and eat as much of it as I could, as fast as I could. Raymond and the man would chat up front until I came up from eating. The man never acknowledged me in front of him. He never said a word to me; he never looked at me. But he always made the same “mistake” of leaving his lunch sitting out for me to “steal.”

I cry even now, remembering this precious man and his “mistakes.” As an adult, I know now that he planned for me. He expected me. He diverted Raymond or Rocky (I just don’t remember for sure which one it was that always took me there) until I could finish up. And I’ll remember that look on his face the first time he saw me, and the compassion in his eyes. I was scared of being caught, but I still saw it. And on some deep level, I understood it.

I think he called CPS, too (whatever it was called back then). I can’t be sure, as my child’s mind doesn’t recall any connection, though I sense there was one. Nothing came of it, though.

More to come– lots and lots more, I’m afraid. It’s not a short story by any means.

The next thing that strikes me is not actually about me. It was something that was done to another kid who was living with Ava and Bill. His name was Kevin. I don’t even know how to relate the depth of how deeply his experience bothered me.

Kevin was chained to the wall in his room, or to the floor in other places that we lived. The point being, he was chained in his room. He would claw to get away, trying to climb the wall to the window in one place that we lived. It was a small window, and very high. He would bleed, and he cried and yelled a lot.

I would sing to him. Nonsense songs. Kid songs. Sometimes songs with no words. But I had to be careful not to get caught. He would calm down when I sang, and sometimes even talk to me. It became something I did often, and for a while it helped me.

Until they let him off of his chain one day (as they sometimes did, when he got “time off for good behavior”). I didn’t want to watch what he was watching on TV, and so he beat me so badly with an electrical cord from a toaster that it ripped big chunks out of my ribs. I quit singing to him then. After that, I was afraid of him. I cried sometimes at night, because I missed comforting him.

They beat me, too. He told them what I’d been doing. He called for me often after that, and I cried, but I never went. I gave up on him out of fear, and even then, found it difficult to forgive myself for doing so.

He wasn’t the only one to beat me with electrical cords, though. Bill and especially Ava would beat me with pretty much anything that came in handy. I tried to hide as much as possible. Usually, though, it wasn’t very possible.

The worse part was that I wasn’t potty trained, and so when I came to them, they began to punish me whenever I didn’t use the potty. A typical punishment for wetting myself was a freezing bath. They would run the cold water, throw ice from the freezer in it, and make me sit in it until long after I was shivering so hard my teeth were chattering and I couldn’t hold a washcloth.

Then I’d get beaten for dropping the washcloth.

I have several over-lapping memories of getting put into “time out” and asking to go potty. They wouldn’t let me go, and then would beat me severely (usually with a piece of wood) for peeing myself because after several hours, I couldn’t hold it anymore. It was after one of these that the episode at the swampy pond behind the house happened.

Ava became infuriated that I had wet myself, so she took me out back to the pond there. She made me strip myself, then gave me a sledgehammer and told me to break the thick ice. When I couldn’t, she beat me, kicked me, and slapped me until she was tired. Then she broke the ice.

I had to bathe in it and wash my clothes. I slipped and fell. There is a current there, not a big one, but there is one. It swept me into the water and under the ice. Ava caught me by the hair and dragged me back out. Another time someone who wanted to kill me saved me.

It was during this time, with Ava and Bill, that I started to predict things, and see people. I know the official stance would be that I’m crazy, that I was schizophrenic. But I didn’t see them with my eyes; I sensed them with my mind. And I predicted things regularly.

I was too young to keep my damned mouth shut.

I told them, and when I was right, I got rewarded. Mmmm, bacon.

When I was wrong, I got punished. But I got punished in a very specific way upon these events. When I predicted something, and it was wrong, they would strangle me until I died. Then they would resuscitate me. I don’t think that it’s possible to know a greater terror than that which seizes you as you slowly lose all ability to gain oxygen.

But as time went by, something very strange began to happen to me. I lost the fear. I still struggled for my life– and lost, of course. I still fear drowning or strangling today. But I don’t fear the actual dying. In fact, for most of my life since then, I’ve wanted it. Hoped for it. I’ve even tried for it.

Clearly, since I’m here, they were successful every time in bringing me back. They were clearly trained for it. But… I don’t think they ever realized that they destroyed utterly any fear I have of dying.

Because it’s better there. It’s peaceful; it’s calm, yet it’s like the happiest moment of your life. Better, in a way, because you don’t remember anything until you come back. I had, and remember, many NDEs during these experiences. They sustained me through much of what happened to me.

You’d think that dying would be a terrible thing. It is. But being dead isn’t. So for all those years where I was suicidal… I didn’t so much want to die, as I wanted to be dead. It’s a subtle difference, but I’m sure you can see it.

There’s this part of me that’s horrified that anyone could do this to a young child. There’s another part of me that wants me to believe it was all a big lie. Imagined. That no one CAN do that to a child.

But children are killed every day, and not resuscitated. For Ava and Bill, this was just another form of punishment.

I try not to wonder what dying so often did to my brain tissue. Then again, I have learning disabilities and other problems… maybe I don’t really need to ask, hey?

If you’re asking yourself the question right now, I can’t say that it really did much for my psychic accuracy, honestly. In fact, sometimes it made me lie and make something up just to have an answer– any answer. If it was wrong, they’d do it to me anyway. And yes, it’s a very strange and surreal feeling to consider typing… “If I was wrong, they’d still kill me, even though they claimed they just wanted me to try.”

Somehow, it’s something that you shouldn’t ever have to write. Once you’re dead, you should be dead, and stay dead. I tell myself that I wasn’t really dead, just unconscious. Sometimes it works for me, but most of the time I have to be honest with myself. You don’t have to have mouth-to-mouth and get bruised ribs from resuscitation when you’re just unconscious.

And I watched them have discussions about me, too… while I was dead. Talking with the doctor a couple of times, while I was dead. Their upset that I was, and would stay, dead. Then I chose to go back to my body. Not just to spite them, though.

It was many years before I stopped taking “I’m going to kill you if you…” comments seriously. I still find the phrase distasteful and not overly funny or cute. It could really just go away. Death is kinda cool, but like I said, dying sucks.

And then again, there’s another insidious thing about this. I mean, who’s going to believe me? I’ve only told one person about this. I got heavy silence and then the pronouncement that it’s not possible. Funny how toddlers have been proven by science to be able to regrow fingers and toes… but apparently they can’t be resuscitated?

This, for me, is the great struggle. I find myself both desiring to talk about it… yet living with the perpetual knowledge that no one would ever believe me. It’s too fantastic. It’s too unimaginable.

When I look at my daughter who’s 3 years old, I cannot, for the life of me, fathom ever doing any of those things to her. I couldn’t kill her once, even if I thought I could resuscitate her. How could anyone do it? It traverses the limits of imagination that anyone could bring themselves to do such a thing to a precious child.

There were other tortures to be endured. I suppose a laundry list isn’t really necessary, because so many of them are typical. Beating, slapping, hitting, being tied up, locked into closets. The standard things you hear about in horrific abuse cases.

But I rarely hear of some of them. I don’t know if it’s just because it hasn’t happened to others, or because they’re so terrible, or because to those of us who it has happened, we don’t bother to speak of it. You’ll often see me say, “Who would ever believe me?” And that’s because this has been reinforced all through my life.

Most of the people whom I’ve told only parts of my story to didn’t believe me. I think that most people don’t want to believe it. I’d like to say that I judge them for that, but let’s face it– I know it’s true, I was there. I don’t even want to believe it.

But this was one of the ways that they controlled me. They told me that no one would believe me. And throughout my life, this has been reinforced. People usually don’t believe me.

When I do meet people who believe me, I don’t tell the whole story. “The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

The truth is, I was subjected to shock treatments with homemade machines. A battery is really all you need. It really hurts like hell, and so do the burns left behind. I was given some medication so that I’d vomit violently for hours. Can I just say, that’s excruciating. Seriously. After a while, your stomach is empty, and it just violently jerks and heaves and your throat closes and you get really sore.

All while they laughed. They laughed a lot when they tortured us.

I sometimes think that I could sort of understand if someone became so angry that they lost control. I lose control and scream my daughter’s name at the top of my lungs sometimes when I get mad. I guess someone might do a lot worse.

But they weren’t always mad, really. Often, they laughed. I guess really that’s what boggles my mind the most. The misery and their laughter. It’s so bizarre. Somehow, this seems to be the most inhuman (not to mention inhumane) thing imaginable.

Their laughter would ring in my ears as I cried in pain. And often that would infuriate them the more– when I cried, they got angry. They didn’t want me to cry so that they could laugh, I think.

I was stripped naked and slapped. This, they thought was funny, too. They’d even compare the handprints on my body.

They were very good at doing things that wouldn’t show up or leave marks. Usually at the same time as they did things that did leave marks.

They’d drag me slowly behind the car– too fast for me to walk or run to keep up. I’d be bruised and scraped. Then they’d stomp on my stomach. Sometimes hard enough to bruise me, but not usually. Just hard enough to hurt. And if they did bruise me, it wouldn’t matter, because I’d already be so badly scraped and bruised from my “fall” that it was just another among the many.

Part of the torture for me there, though, was watching the others suffer. The girls were brutalized far more than the boys were. The boys were, after all, boys. And boys, they were always careful to inform us girls, were better in every way. There was a hierarchy there, and us girls were at the bottom aside from poor Kevin. The dogs were better treated.

This leads us to sexual abuse, and the fact that I saw one of the girls get a baby stomped out of her. Eventually, Natalie did escape, while she was pregnant, even. But that wasn’t the first time she’d gotten pregnant. I know because the first time she got pregnant, I was going to the bathroom to go potty, and I saw Ava stomping repeatedly on Natalie’s stomach.

She was calling her a whore. She was accusing her of seducing Bill. Sound familiar? Sound a little bit like Edna and my mother? Yeah, to me, too. Anyway, there was a lot of blood, and Ava was screaming about killing the baby and how Natalie was a useless whore. She saw me watching, and she made me clean up the blood. After she kicked me a few times for good measure, that is.

There was standard sexual abuse of all of the girls, so far as I know. Natalie, I think, had it the worst on the standard stuff. I have no doubt that this was just a continuance of the more sinister things, which she’d outgrown the usefulness for. More on that in a bit.

I personally experienced the standard stuff. “Touch my cock.” “Kiss it.” “Say you love me.” “No, run your hands up and down like this.”

“Tell anyone about this, and I’ll kill them and you both. Only you’ll really be dead this time. Forever.” Maybe that was the threat that let me tell. I did tell, in a roundabout way, later on. But I was afraid of getting the other person killed more than for myself.

That was in the light of day. In the open spaces of the house.

Elsewhere, though, what I experienced was far stranger, and is far more difficult to talk about.

There were nights, some of them warm summer nights, and some cold winter nights, that we would go to the Baptist Church. I’d watch the stars and the moon, and go off into my own little world. I’d have mental conversations with my imaginary friends. They’d tell me that everything was going to be okay. To not be afraid, that it would be over someday.

They told me what I wanted to hear. I guess that’s the job of one’s imaginary friends.

Then the ride would be over, and it was time. We’d go into the Church. It’s a familiar place. Probably even be familiar to millions of Americans in its own way. Bibles on the backs of the benches. Songbooks, too. A massive cross behind the podium. All red velvet and red carpets and warm brown wood.

Christian churches are often warm places, despite the terribly uncomfortable benches. It was inviting and comforting and yet echoed with a great hollow sort of sound. It was tall, with a pointy ceiling.

We’d solemnly go down the back stairs and into the hallway. We’d pass my Sunday School classroom. It had whitewashed walls that looked like concrete or something. All pimply and rough. It would be silent and rather spooky. We’d pass by the other Sunday School classrooms in a silent, reverential procession.

And into the basement where the walls were black. A gold blanket draped across the altar, and a big gold ‘basin’ like a bathtub sat on the higher part of it. This is when I’d get scared, even though my imaginary friends told me not to. I pretended in my mind that they were there with me, hugging me, holding my hand. Because I couldn’t face it alone, but I had no choice.

The first time, I didn’t go willingly. They were brutal to me that time.

After that, I went willingly. I never fought again, though I’m ashamed to say it.

They’d cover their faces with masks, usually black ones, but the main guy would wear a white one. I still get a bit creeped out by the scary movie guy who wears the white hockey mask. I don’t even remember his name or which big movie series it is. I try not to think about it. (Psycho?)

Because it’s a little too familiar, and it makes me want to piss myself.

That’s how scared I always was, on those nights. I wanted to piss myself. It was terrifying to me. Not only because I knew it was going to hurt, but because somehow I knew that there was more to it than just that. I hated those guys. I was afraid of those guys. They weren’t all men, don’t get me wrong.

And there was the church above us. Condemning in its very presence. And there was no sanctuary to be found there. In many ways, even as the years have gone by, that was the greatest betrayal of all. Jesus never did save me.

No. I stood praying and begging for deliverance, for safety, and instead I was raped.

They weren’t gentle. They were never gentle. They weren’t ever again as brutal as the first time, but they were never gentle. They would sexually assault me as if I were an adult. I was raped and I was forced to kiss penises. My face was rubbed with penises, and I had to kiss the women’s vaginas, too. The women assaulted me with a small paddle/dildo, usually after they had used it.

When they were done, and with my adult mind I have to say that I don’t believe any of them ejaculated on me at that time, they would move me into the basin. No one spoke; I was simply informed with gestures. I would crawl there, bleeding and sore. Yes, that’s right, willingly. I was too afraid not to.

Then they would “pee” on me. It was ejaculation, I understand now as an adult, but I didn’t understand then. Then they’d remind me that I was willing, and they’d call me a whore and tell me that I liked it. I’d fight not to cry, because when I cried, they would beat me. More than usual.

Because sometimes after that, they’d strap me up on a cross. There, they’d beat me with switches. It would leave marks later, usually. Then they would dance and have sex again. A lot of the time, I’d go numb after that, probably the drugs that were heavy in the air. They’d turn me around, throw me back on the altar, and sexually assault me again. By this point I could never walk. Too much pain, too little coherent thought. The memories are still clear, though not as clear as the rest.

There was a lot of demand for “kissing”– oral sex to the best that a small child can do it. I was the center of the “festivities” silent as they were, and I wasn’t left alone at any point through the whole thing. I was either being “peed” on or I was being fondled or raped.

I was beaten with a switch every time that I cried.

I was usually bloody long before the end of it, and they often strapped me down to keep me on the altar. No one ever took their masks off, though robes usually came off halfway through the celebration.

Afterwards, they would carry me out, where they would still wear their masks and chatter way. Their voices would echo strangely through the church, and I remember someone saying once that I was his favorite. The comment fell during one of those lulls that happen in conversations, so it echoed loud and harsh in the confines of the church. For some reason, it was hilariously funny to everyone else. Someone ran his or her hand across the organ (musical instrument). They talked about going back down again, but didn’t. I thought maybe Jesus heard my prayers after all.

There was another ritual. It was pretty much the same, except that they would have a young boy there. He would get the dubious honor of raping me first. They usually looked as scared as I felt. Somehow that always made me cry the harder. I don’t know why they didn’t have to wear masks, too. Maybe so they could be threatened.

As you can imagine, I never asked.

There were other little girls there sometimes, too. They were used in much the same way. I often tried to comfort them, and the boys. I always got severely beaten for trying. Yet they couldn’t quite beat that impulse out of me.

I try not to think about it. I’ve never actually told anyone the whole thing before. Never laid it out there, straight, complete, and honest. Most people get too freaked out to be able to hear the bald, unvarnished details. Perhaps for some, the image of a 3-6 year old in this experience is just too vivid for them.

Sometimes I want to drop the burden of memory. If I could just forget, I reason, the pain would go away. In some ways, I always wanted to talk about it. I wanted to be heard. Maybe a burden shared could be a burden more easily borne.

Other times, I can push it back and pretend that it’s all a dream– a nightmare– that never happened. But then something will happen and remind me, and I’ll struggle once more with it.

In the 80’s, there was a big thing about a girl who remembered satanic ritual abuse during hypnosis. Then it turned into a big huge stink about how it was just implanted memories and not real. For a while, this gave me hope! Maybe MINE were just implanted memories too!

Sadly, someone informed me of the facts of the matter. One must remember something AFTER hypnosis for it to be possibly implanted memories, not BEFORE. That hope died a silent, yet painful death.

I don’t remember how often it happened. I would hazard to guess every couple of months or so maybe, I don’t know. Time is strange for children. What seems like forever to them is a flash in the pan for adults. So I couldn’t say how frequent it was.

Tall. Freckles on her arm. Sunshine. Playing and laughing. Deep down, despite everything, I’ve always felt that she loved me. Incompetent or not, she loved me.

She was pretty. Maybe all little children think their mothers are pretty, I don’t know. But I thought mine was.

And when she came back for us, I knew her. Don’t let anybody tell you that children forget. I remembered, and I wanted her more than I wanted anything else.

Bill and Ava told me one day that if anyone tried to take me away from them, they’d kill them. I knew they were going to kill her if she didn’t take us with her the very next time.

Another memory of her. Knowing she was going to die. Knowing it, and so begging her to take me with her. Begging her, groveling at her feet. “Don’t leave me here. Take me with you. Please, oh please, please don’t leave me. If you leave me now, you’ll never see me again.” Oh, I begged her. I warned her. And I begged her not to die. “Please don’t die, mommy!”

“I won’t, baby, I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“I promise!”

“You’re gonna die. Please take me with you.”

“I can’t, baby, I can’t. I’m so sorry.”

And with tears in her eyes, she was gone. I understand now how much it must have hurt her. It must have torn her apart in ways that cannot be expressed to have to leave with her child distraught and begging and screaming for her. I’m sorry momma. So sorry. I’m so sorry for that. It breaks my heart now to understand how leaving me must have broken yours.

Then the rest of my memories of her are of death and loss. I’ll put them here in order, though that’s not the way I remember them. Because as I say, a child’s memory is different. They remember in order of emotional strength, not in order of time frame. So this is the best reconstruction I can do with what I have to work with.

I woke up one night to the sound of screaming. I asked Natalie what it was, and she told me to go back to sleep, it was just a wildcat. I tried to go back to sleep, but I was keyed up, so I decided to go potty. Down the stairs I snuck, slowly and cautiously. If they caught me, I’d be punished, more likely than not.

I heard them come in the front door, and I heard voices. I hid as quickly as I could. From where I was, I could see the stairs. Bill came into view, carrying my mother. She was in his arms, rather the way one would carry a baby cradled, except her head was falling over his arm. She was wearing a greenish-teal t-shirt and something white over it.

I knew immediately that she was dead. Were I a poet, I couldn’t begin to express the depth of misery, sorrow, desperation, desolation, and agony that settled into me. In that moment, knowing that my mother was dead, something deep within me died. Hope lost the fight in that instant, and it took decades to resurrect it. To say I was bereft is to say that a blizzard is a bit of a snow or that the Sahara is ‘big.’

I understood death. I understood my mother’s death. I felt it in every part of myself.

I don’t know how long it was, but Bill came back downstairs. When he did, and went outside, I snuck upstairs. When I got up there, I saw the storage room door open. I went inside, and the jars had been moved. My mother was stuffed into a false back on one of the shelves, where normally the drugs and guns were kept.

She was staring at me. Her cheek was split open, a bloody spot there with white bone showing through. Her eyes, though, were the part that scared me so badly that I still sometimes have nightmares about it. They stared, and they weren’t shiny. There were tiny wrinkles in them. It’s difficult to explain, but they left no doubt for me. She was dead.

I crawled back into my bed. I laid there and wanted to die. I worked to stifle my sobbing, but couldn’t. No one woke up, but I couldn’t sleep, either.

A while later, I sneaked back downstairs, and then outside. I must have heard them talking, though I don’t remember that. I just remember sneaking out the back door, and to the corner of the house. There, Bill, Ava, Raymond, and my mother’s husband were there. They were butchering in a pool of light from one of those old fashioned outdoor lights. The kind with a small cage around the light, and a hook so you can hang them up. But it wasn’t hung up; it was lying on the ground.

The saw was whining, and they were standing and watching. Bill was cutting something and throwing it to the pigs, who were quite happy with their midnight snack. I stared for a few moments. It seems long, but again, I was a child so any period of time could be long. It was long enough that the cold was hurting my naked feet fairly badly.

I watched them for a bit, and then I almost screamed in dismay. A pale arm flopped from behind Bill, and lay in the pool of light. I watched longer until lights from a car interrupted them. They scrambled to the side of the house where they’d been digging to put in a root cellar. They shoved something in and walked towards the pool of light again. I ran inside and went back to my bed. I was too scared then even to cry.

Another memory, which I thought was unrelated, but learned later was perfectly related…. it must have been the next day. I saw a mustang car slowly sinking into the bog of the swamp not far from our house as we walked to school. There was blood on the white and black fluffy seat covers.

Come to find out, it was one of the boys’ car (Rocky, I think). It did have those fluffy seat covers, and it did go missing…. right around when my mother did.

Those pigs were made into ham that year. I still cannot even force myself to eat ham. I don’t mind pork or bacon, but I simply cannot abide ham.